1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the salvaging of wire rope, and more particularly relates to an automatic feed and cutting mechanism for salvaging wire rope by intermittently feeding the wire rope to be salvaged to a cutting blade a preselected length at a time as defined by the stroke of the feeding mechanism.
2. General Background
Wire rope is well-known in the construction industry as the cable which is used for rigging cranes, draglines, dredges, and many other powered mechanisms for the lifting and moving of loads and/or materials. Probably the most common use of wire rope is on a crane or dragline where the rope itself is the elongated load carrier which is wound upon a powered winch, threaded across one or more pulleys upon a structural boom, and then lowered for connection to an object to be lifted. Wire rope is flexible, can be manufactured in virtually unlimited length, and it is quite strong though only of a small diameter of, for example, one-half to two inches.
Because of wire ropes desirable load carrying, flexible properties as aforedescribed, it is also very difficult to dispose of once it has become useless. Wire rope can become rusted, kinked, frayed, or simply cut during its normal use. Thus, large lengths of wire rope must be disposed of. A very long length of several hundred feet, for example, of wire rope which has become rusted and frayed can be very awkward to deal with. Disposal of such a length of wire rope is typically achieved by collapsing the wire rope into a small a package as possible, and then burying the rope for disposal. Manual cutting of the rope into pieces has also been done to dispose of rope.
Several devices have been patented which relate to cable cutting and shearing.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,313,356 entitled "Method of Removing Front and Rear Segments of Wire Rod" issued Feb. 2, 1982 teaches a method of removing the front and rear segments of a rolled wire fed in winding packages subdivided into good stock and into scrap windings separated by cutting movements corresponding substantially to the transporting movement of the winding packages. The windings spirally or helically surround a guidepipe element. Several cutting wheels rotate in the region of the upper surface of the guide-pipe element. The cutting wheels, together with counter knives, which stand still during the cutting procedure, form a separating device. The peripheral speed of the cutting wheel and cutters corresponds at lest substantially to the transporting speed of the winding packages.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,188,845 issued to Stukenberg and entitled "Strip Cutter" in February of 1980 discloses strips cut by an edge trimmer which are engaged by rollers pulling the strips through a pipe and permitting the strips to hang down and descent through a funnel towards a horizontally operating cutter comprised of an annular blade across which passes an excentrically rotating blade, to cut the strips into small pieces. The rotating portion of the cutter may include two blades, and the stationary part may have plural annular blades arranged around the axis of the rotation of the blades; different strips such as from different trimmers are fed to the annular blades, surrounded by separate funnels.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,205,419 issued to Aoshima in June of 1980 discloses an apparatus for cutting a tying band of a coiled material comprising a cutter for cutting the tying band, and pinch rollers for pinching and transferring the tying band after it is cut out. The cut comprises a lower cutter and a pair of upper cutters pivotally mounted on the lower cutter. The lower cutter is connected to a hydraulic cylinder and adapted to be moved up and down along a guide which is obliquely mounted to a base member by the actuation of the hydraulic cylinder. The tying band is being cut out between the lower cutter and the upper cutters.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,799,020 entitled "Scrap Chopper" issued to Hoeimer on Mar. 26, 1974. The patent teaches a rotary scrap chopper for cutting scrap edge trimming from flat sheet metal strips. The chopper comprises a pair of knife carrying rotary arbors cooperable with a stationary knife to effect cutting of the edge trimmings into short pieces of scrap metal. The arbor knives are generally rectangular in cross section and have four cutting edges located on two cylindrical faces generated about a surface of revolution, the axis of which crosses the longitudinal axis of the knife. To facilitate a progressive cut, the knives are angulated relative to the axis of the arbor and the stationary knife. They are also supported on nonradial seats of the arbor so as to provide scrap clearance immediately behind the cutting edge. The stationary knife has a cutting edge defined by two surfaces which intersect at an included angle of approximately 105.degree..
U.S. Pat. No. 3,727,497 issued to Davis et al on Apr. 17, 1973 teaches an apparatus for cutting an outer layer of helical wires from a cable core comprises an annular sheat blade through which the core is advanced and planetary circular shear blades that cut the wires as they pass over the annular blade.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,736,822 issued to McVaugh on June 5, 1973 discloses an apparatus and method is provided for salvaging underground and overhead electrical cable. The apparatus of this invention includes a mobile platform such as a truck on which there is mounted an adjustable cable guide which guides the cable to a cable puller which draws the cable from either an underground conduit or from overhead installation. The cable is then fed to a cable cutter which is synchronized with the rate of feed of the cable so as to cut the cable into predetermined lengths. The cut lengths of teh cable are then fed to a truck or the like and hauled away to a smelter for recovery of the metal.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,612,412 entitled "Process and Apparatus for Recovering Metals from Cables" issued Oct. 12, 1971 discloses cable comprising aluminum strands wound about a steel core which is reduced to its separate metal components by cutting substantially through the aluminum strands at closely spaced intervals, but leaving the steel core intact. This frees small aluminum strand segments from the core and these segments may be reduced still further in a reduction mill. The core is wound into a roll after the segments are cut away from it. The aluminum strands are severed into the segments by blades having notches therein which are sized to fit around the core but not around the strands about the core. The blades may be mounted on revolving wheels or they may reciprocate.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,605,541 entitled "Rotary Shear and Scrap Preparation Method" patented Sept. 20, 1971 teaches high capacity shearing to prescribed lengths of various materials from rigid rods to pliable wire which is provided by a rotary drum shear, eccentrically weighted, with a cutting blade peripherally mounted so as to utilize the eccentric weighting to increase the force available for heavy-duty scrap cutting usage. Elongated scrap material to be cut to length is fed radially inwardly toward the axis of rotation of the drum between a fixed blade adn the drum mounted blade. With this system cutting force is uniform across the full length of the cutting blades.